Salvation in Light of the Cross: The Scarlet Thread

Through Scripture In this Lenten episode of In Light of the Cross, we reflect on last week’s four dimensions of sin: breaking God’s command, betraying relationship with God, siding with God’s enemy and becoming enslaved, and forfeiting the good life that leads to death.

From there, we frame the Bible not as a rulebook but as the unified story of how God answers sin and restores humanity to fellowship with him and to his likeness—fulfilled in Jesus’ cross and resurrection. We talk about how the cross becomes the lens that reinterprets the Old Testament like a late-movie reveal, and we summarize the Old Testament as humanity’s failure woven with a scarlet thread of grace pointing to Christ. We read lyrics from the Gettys’ “Scarlet Thread,” then end with gratitude and the Lord’s Prayer.

00:00 Lenten Focus on Salvation

01:15 Pause and Prepare

02:34 Four Dimensions of Sin

04:02 Salvation Restores Image

05:34 Cross as Bible Lens

08:15 Old Testament Scarlet Thread

09:57 Ephesians and God’s Plan

11:44 Scarlet Thread Song Lyrics

14:03 Gratitude and Application

14:59 Yielding in Lord’s Prayer

welcome to today's episode of In Light

of the Cross, this Lenten season.

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If you've been following us, we

are seeking to put the cross before

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our minds daily, so that by that we

can be transformed in our thoughts

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and in our attitudes, and in our

affections and in our actions.

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And this week we want to explore

salvation in light of the cross.

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And we are going to spend some time

walking through the biblical narrative

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to see how, the cross is God's definitive

answer to our greatest problem, which

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is sin, which we explored last week,

God has been working and moving in this

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direction ever since Genesis chapter

three when Adam and Eve sin and broke

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off the relationship with God, right?

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Yes, The cross is the answer, but

uh, it's an answer that's been a long

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time coming in a sense of preparation.

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Paul talked about the fullness of time.

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When the fullness of time has

come, God sent forth his son.

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So the idea is that there's

a certain amount of things

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that had to happen beforehand.

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Yeah.

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And we're excited to dive

into those this week.

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Yeah, we are.

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I'm very excited about this one.

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it might even dip into next week too.

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We'll see.

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Right.

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There's some good stuff here.

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So today and this week, as we

did last week, we will follow

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the structure of pausing.

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To prepare ourselves,

uh, for this episode.

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Again, we want this not to be just an

intellectual exercise, but a devotional

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prayerful podcast in which you can

connect with God in a deeper way.

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and after we pause, we will reflect

by remembering last week in the

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four dimensions of sin, So we're

going to review the four dimensions

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of sin that we talked about last

week, and then describe how.

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This sets the direction for

the whole Bible in a sense.

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The whole Bible is a story of how

God answers and solves that problem.

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Yeah.

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And all that comes into

fulfillment in Jesus and on the

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cross and in his resurrection.

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Exactly.

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And I love how the Bible project

puts it, that the, the Bible is

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a story that points to Jesus.

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Right.

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Full, cohesive story that points to Jesus.

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So with that background, let's go

ahead and just take a, a moment

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to pause wherever you're at.

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Okay.

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Um, go ahead and take some

deep breaths and ask the Lord

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to meet you in this moment.

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All right.

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Just a reminder from last week, and

it's one that we can't really get enough

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of, is that sin is multidimensional.

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And none of the dimensions are good.

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They're all bad.

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There are many things it does

that, that bring, uh, destruction

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to what we are created to be.

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So we talked about that sin is the

breaking of a command, but it's

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also a betrayal of the relationship.

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And if you recall, we looked at Adam,

Adam and Eve broke the command of

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God, but before they could do that,

they had to distrust God's goodness.

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And they actually had to also.

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Trust the word of God's enemy,

the temperature in place of God.

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So there's a sense in which it

is also siding with God's enemy.

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And then because of that, it's

also forfeiting the life that God

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intended them to have the good life.

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And God said, when you eat

of it, you will surely die.

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And that is when death

came into this world.

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So sin is breaking the command of God.

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Yes.

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But it's also betraying the relationship.

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We are looking at God and saying,

my will be done, not yours.

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And we are siding with God's enemy because

it's naive, really to think it's our will.

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We are actually listening

to somebody else.

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As Bob Dylan used to sing.

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We gotta serve somebody.

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Amen.

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Amen.

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And then lastly, it's also forfeiting

the good life that God desired.

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So those are the four ways in

which sin manifests itself.

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And really today we're gonna

begin talking about how the

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Bible is not just a rule book.

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It's not just a story book.

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It's not just, a bunch of things

we're supposed to do or not do.

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It's a story.

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Of how God fixes the problem of

evil, how he is restoring the

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world and indeed the cosmos.

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And he does that through fixing humans,

creating a new kind of human through

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Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ, who

can be heirs of this kind of life, who

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can be in a right relationship with God.

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Who can be forgiven of their

sin and then live fully as God's

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image within this creation of his.

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So yeah, that's where we're at.

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and again, just as you're explaining that,

that goes back all the way to Genesis,

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it's that verse Genesis 1 27, God said,

let us create humanity in our image.

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And so in the image of

God, he created them.

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So it's that that gets restored.

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And then through that we spend

time partnering with God in the

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restoration of the rest of creation.

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Exactly.

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The ultimate goal of salvation is

not the forgiveness of our sins.

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That's the approximate goal.

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The ultimate goal is that we are

restored to fellowship with God and

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we are restored to God's likeness

within this creation of his.

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And that's something that can

begin as we are forgiven of our

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sins, but can extend into eternity.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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God has wonderful plans

more than just forgiving us.

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Amen.

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It starts there, but it

sure doesn't end there.

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Mm-hmm.

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. So one of the good things to

talk about here is how the cross

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actually then reinterprets the

rest of what happens in the Bible,

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and especially the Old Testament.

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It's because of the cross then that

we can understand the true meaning

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of what salvation meant and the,

the flow of the story before Christ.

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Before Christ.

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So in the Old Testament.

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Yeah.

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This is a really interesting point

because the Old Testament is really

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hard to understand sometimes.

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Yeah.

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Um, yeah.

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Sometimes, sometimes more than others.

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Okay.

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Uh, I mean, as is the New Testament,

sometimes the, the Bible's just a complex

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book, you know, very composed of 66.

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Other books.

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This is a library.

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And so, uh, having the cross specifically,

the person of Jesus whose life comes

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to fulfillment in the cross and the

resurrection as a lens by which we

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understand what else God is doing

through the story of the Bible,

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that's a really, really helpful thing.

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So what we're gonna do is.

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Talk a little bit about how understanding

the cross really sheds light on

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so many other stories in the Old

Testament, and that's the whole in

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light of the cross kind of thing.

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Exactly.

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So all of scripture, all of time, all

of our lives, even all of the future,

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can be understood in light of what Jesus

has done on the cross through his death

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and that ultimately his resurrection.

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Right?

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I was trying to think of a good analogy,

and maybe you've seen a movie where

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there's some reveal towards the end

of the movie that changes how you

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interpret all that's gone before it.

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And the best example I could think of

was the Sixth Sense by Bruce Willis.

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And I won't go into the whole thing

'cause I don't want to take the time,

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but basically you're not told of a key

fact until almost the end of the movie,

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but when you do then it makes sense of so

many confusing parts that were before it.

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You're like, oh, that's

what those mean now.

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And maybe some other movies you've seen.

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You, you mentioned one that I didn't know.

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Yeah.

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Fight Club.

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Fight Club.

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah.

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so the same thing.

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There's a, a key part that

unless that's revealed, the

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rest doesn't really make sense.

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It's interesting.

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Mm-hmm.

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But you want, what,

what's the point of this?

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And that's kind of the way

it is with the Old Testament.

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Until you see the cross of Jesus

Christ as the fulfillment of that,

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you don't get all that happens before.

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You understand God saves his

people, but saving them from what?

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And how does he save them?

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So that's what we're gonna

be talking about today.

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All right, so in light of that, we're

gonna look at, some of the ways that

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God works in the story of the Old

Testament that lead up to the cross.

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And really there's two main parts

that we want to get across here.

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Two main notes.

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If you're gonna just sum up the Old

Testament in two, two sentences as a

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word to me, it'd be something like this.

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The Old Testament is a tapestry

of humanity's failure, but.

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There's also mixed through that

tapestry, a scarlet threat of grace.

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Hmm.

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So it's a story of how humanity

cannot save itself from its own

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problems and its own sin and evil.

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But God is faithful and he's working

this plan and he's weaving this

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thread, which comes to create this

beautiful picture of the cross.

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He's planting seeds that.

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Become this harvest of

the cross, as it were.

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I like that.

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it's a good image that in the midst of

the brokenness, God is still working

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in it and through it, and hopefully

over this week we will begin to see

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the ways in these various biblical

narratives that God is doing that and

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pointing even thousands of years before.

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Jesus came, he's pointing to the

work that Jesus is gonna come and do.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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That's the goal.

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And as you said the cross is not something

that just begins the year 30 ad, or is

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whatever the exact year is, goes all the

way back and even before time began itself

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as Ephesians one talks about, you mean

the, I'm sorry, the cross or God's work.

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Both.

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Both.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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Ephesians one says, we were chosen in

him before the creation of the world

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to be holy and blameless in his sight.

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That is in, uh, verse

four and then verse 11.

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In him, we were also chosen having been

predestined according to the plan of him.

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Who works out everything in conformity

with the purpose of his will.

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And right before that he said he

may have known to us the mystery

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of his will, according to his good

pleasure, which he purposed in Christ.

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To be put into effect when the

times reach their fulfillment

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to bring unity to all things in

heaven and on earth, under Christ.

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So this plan of God predates even

the creation of the world because

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he saw the what was going to happen.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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That's an incredible thought.

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Yeah, it is.

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And when he says that we're included in

that before the creation of the world,

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that should give us a lot of security.

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We're not gonna work our way out of this.

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Mm-hmm.

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God has seen it all.

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He's seen our failure.

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Well, I'm digressing here, but,

yeah, so sin is those things.

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It's breaking the command.

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It's betraying the relationship.

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It's becoming enslaved to the powers

of God's enemy, and it's forfeiting

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the good life that God desired for us.

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But as we're gonna see John three,

one, John three, Jesus came to

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undo the works of the devil.

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So Jesus comes to forgive us

for the breaking of the commands

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to restore the relationship.

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To defeat the power that enslave

us and to bring us to the true and

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eternal life that is the scarlet

thread that God weaves throughout all

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things, including in our own lives.

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Amen.

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Okay.

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Nathan, you, uh, introduced me

to a song by that title, the

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Scarlet Thread, um, by the Gettys.

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I think it'd be great if you

wanted to read the lyrics to that.

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Yeah.

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I love this song.

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Because of the way that it ties together

the movement of God throughout the

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scriptures pointing to the cross.

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So you can go and look it up if you want.

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It's called Scarlet Thread

by Keith and Kristen Getty.

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It features Zach Williams, but let

me just read the, the verses here.

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Yeah.

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Moving from the Gates of

Eden, God made garments.

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From the skin of a beast that died to

show the covering we would need for sin.

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Abraham on Mount Mariah with an altar,

but no lamb lifts his knife to offer

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Isaac, but then God provides the ram.

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Verse three says, Crimson stains around

at the doorway as the angel's shadow fell.

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Safe from judgment.

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Death passed over all the sons of Israel,

rope of red, a sign of promise from a

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window and a wall Rahab's family to be

rescued when old Jericho would fall.

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The last verse says, every

priest within the temple sees

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the bloodshed, knows the cost.

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Every lamb on the altar

pointing us toward the cross.

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For the cross speaks once forever,

once to heal and overthrow

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every sin that left a scarlet.

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so he made us white ass snow.

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The chorus says, oh, what love

pour out across the ages, all of

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heaven's kindness running red.

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Oh, what mercy There upon the pages.

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All God's children praise the

weaver of this scarlet thread.

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Oh, that's great stuff.

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So we'll dive into some of those stories.

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Yeah.

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And see how they point to the cross.

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Mm-hmm.

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That God, God's kindness is poured out

all over the pages of the scripture.

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Yeah.

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And it reveals both our great

need and God's great grace.

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Exactly.

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Well put.

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As we move to a time of application,

we thought that it would be good

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to, spend some time and gratitude

for the ways that even in the midst

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of this profound brokenness, this

profound sin, God has been gracious.

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God has pursued humanity and love.

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God has been on mission,

a mission of redemption.

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And reconciliation between us

and him and us and each other.

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And so let's spend some time

and gratitude thanking God

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for his great, great kindness.

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Our last movement here is a time of

yielding, and we'll do as we've done

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every day so far, by concluding with

the time of reciting the Lord's Prayer.

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Again, this is a time of yielding our

wills to God, saying not our name.

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Be hallowed but yours and not

our wills be done but yours.

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We are dependent upon you for our daily

bread and for forgiveness of our sins.

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So with that in mind, let's

pray together the Lord's Prayer.

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Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come, your will be

done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us today our daily bread

and forgive us our debts as we

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also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

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Amen.